Bill C-69 (Historical)

An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

Part 1 enacts the Impact Assessment Act and repeals the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012. Among other things, the Impact Assessment Act
(a) names the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada as the authority responsible for impact assessments;
(b) provides for a process for assessing the environmental, health, social and economic effects of designated projects with a view to preventing certain adverse effects and fostering sustainability;
(c) prohibits proponents, subject to certain conditions, from carrying out a designated project if the designated project is likely to cause certain environmental, health, social or economic effects, unless the Minister of the Environment or Governor in Council determines that those effects are in the public interest, taking into account the impacts on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada, all effects that may be caused by the carrying out of the project, the extent to which the project contributes to sustainability and other factors;
(d) establishes a planning phase for a possible impact assessment of a designated project, which includes requirements to cooperate with and consult certain persons and entities and requirements with respect to public participation;
(e) authorizes the Minister to refer an impact assessment of a designated project to a review panel if he or she considers it in the public interest to do so, and requires that an impact assessment be referred to a review panel if the designated project includes physical activities that are regulated under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act;
(f) establishes time limits with respect to the planning phase, to impact assessments and to certain decisions, in order to ensure that impact assessments are conducted in a timely manner;
(g) provides for public participation and for funding to allow the public to participate in a meaningful manner;
(h) sets out the factors to be taken into account in conducting an impact assessment, including the impacts on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada;
(i) provides for cooperation with certain jurisdictions, including Indigenous governing bodies, through the delegation of any part of an impact assessment, the joint establishment of a review panel or the substitution of another process for the impact assessment;
(j) provides for transparency in decision-making by requiring that the scientific and other information taken into account in an impact assessment, as well as the reasons for decisions, be made available to the public through a registry that is accessible via the Internet;
(k) provides that the Minister may set conditions, including with respect to mitigation measures, that must be implemented by the proponent of a designated project;
(l) provides for the assessment of cumulative effects of existing or future activities in a specific region through regional assessments and of federal policies, plans and programs, and of issues, that are relevant to the impact assessment of designated projects through strategic assessments; and
(m) sets out requirements for an assessment of environmental effects of non-designated projects that are on federal lands or that are to be carried out outside Canada.
Part 2 enacts the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, which establishes the Canadian Energy Regulator and sets out its composition, mandate and powers. The role of the Regulator is to regulate the exploitation, development and transportation of energy within Parliament’s jurisdiction.
The Canadian Energy Regulator Act, among other things,
(a) provides for the establishment of a Commission that is responsible for the adjudicative functions of the Regulator;
(b) ensures the safety and security of persons, energy facilities and abandoned facilities and the protection of property and the environment;
(c) provides for the regulation of pipelines, abandoned pipelines, and traffic, tolls and tariffs relating to the transmission of oil or gas through pipelines;
(d) provides for the regulation of international power lines and certain interprovincial power lines;
(e) provides for the regulation of renewable energy projects and power lines in Canada’s offshore;
(f) provides for the regulation of access to lands;
(g) provides for the regulation of the exportation of oil, gas and electricity and the interprovincial oil and gas trade; and
(h) sets out the process the Commission must follow before making, amending or revoking a declaration of a significant discovery or a commercial discovery under the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act and the process for appealing a decision made by the Chief Conservation Officer or the Chief Safety Officer under that Act.
Part 2 also repeals the National Energy Board Act.
Part 3 amends the Navigation Protection Act to, among other things,
(a) rename it the Canadian Navigable Waters Act;
(b) provide a comprehensive definition of navigable water;
(c) require that, when making a decision under that Act, the Minister must consider any adverse effects that the decision may have on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada;
(d) require that an owner apply for an approval for a major work in any navigable water if the work may interfere with navigation;
(e)  set out the factors that the Minister must consider when deciding whether to issue an approval;
(f) provide a process for addressing navigation-related concerns when an owner proposes to carry out a work in navigable waters that are not listed in the schedule;
(g) provide the Minister with powers to address obstructions in any navigable water;
(h) amend the criteria and process for adding a reference to a navigable water to the schedule;
(i) require that the Minister establish a registry; and
(j) provide for new measures for the administration and enforcement of the Act.
Part 4 makes consequential amendments to Acts of Parliament and regulations.

[Alain Sans Cartier]

The Association of Canadian Port Authorities has spoken on Bill C-69. There are of course many concerns about the time limits set out in the bill. The timelines for environmental assessments are already a challenge, even though all Canadian ports are putting considerable effort and resources into minimizing environmental impacts. There are still concerns about this. The question is how to reduce delays without compromising the quality of environmental assessments. Time limits should be more reasonable and more in line with development projects.

Bill C-69 raises concerns around the whole issue of time limits. It could increase delays when the ones we have are already problematic.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, everybody, for being here today.

I'll jump to my first question. My colleague Kelly and I met with some port authorities, and they alerted us to something that is apparently in Bill C-69, in terms of the review of environmental assessments. Port authorities can no longer conduct reviews on environmental assessments for smaller projects. Is that the case? Do you know any background on that, perhaps?

[Daniel Villeneuve]

I can speak to our recent journey that we've taken. We started in November 2016. The environmental process in Newfoundland and Labrador, of course...and the federal government was also included in different departments.... We submitted in November 2017, and we're expecting a final decision from the provincial minister on June 8 for final approval. It was a very long, complicated and expensive process but it assured.... I'm very confident of this because of our experience. It's much like what this gentleman was referring to a while ago: we have one chance to be able to get it right. The environment should not have to suffer because of the economy; the economy should not have to suffer because of the environment. It's finding a balance between those two, much like the gentleman from Ontario was mentioning about the balance of being able to develop business.

I currently own a divested port from the ports program. The unfortunate part about the diversification of ports in Canada is that they are not privately owned. So you're not getting private investments. You're going to have people looking for opportunity and so on, but it's not done in that way. I think in our particular port project in Newfoundland, it will be private. It will be a good example to do that. On the environmental side, it is long.

As far as the insights of Bill C-69 go, I'm not really on top of that. I believe the process is that we have to find the balance between the economy and the environment.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much for that.

I want to speak to another piece of legislation that is currently in front of the Senate. I would welcome comments by any of the witnesses in regard to Bill C-69.

Bill C-69 proposes to tighten regulations involved in building new infrastructure. I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with a journalist who was doing a story on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway celebrating their 60th anniversary. The question was, did we believe that this project would go forward today with the current environment and if Bill C-69 were to pass?

I'm just wondering if any of you have any comments on Bill C-69 and the impact it would have on the projects that you are in fact suggesting as part of a transportation strategy.

[Merven Gruben, Mayor, Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk]

Good morning to you, and good morning to our people in the western Arctic.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on Bill C-88. At first, I did not support this bill, but after some discussions with my NWT colleagues, in particular our good friend Premier Bob McLeod, I do support it but with a strong statement that, moving ahead, full discussion and consultation is taken with our people of the north regarding future decisions and legislation that affects us. For example, early in the current government, Prime Minister Trudeau put in place, without consultation with us, a crippling offshore moratorium that was imposed on us without one word beforehand.

Furthermore, we should be getting the shares or royalties from any developments going forward, similar to the provinces.

We may also be faced with the effects of the currently planned Bill C-69, which may make it harder and harder to develop and bring about economic development throughout our region, and throughout Canada.

To shed some light on why I wanted to be here to speak in person, it's always better to see who you're talking to. Having said that, it's always better to see what you're talking about, so I really invite each and every one of you to come up and take a look at what's going on. Take a look at what your decisions are doing up in the north, in our region. Come and take a look and live in our shoes for a while and see if you can live like that.

Tuk has long been an oil and gas town. Since the first oil boom, or the whalers hunting whales in the late 1800 and early 1900s, we have grown up side by side with industry. We have not had any bad environmental effects from the oil and gas work in our region, and we have benefited from the jobs, training and business opportunities that have been available when the industry has worked in Tuk and throughout the north, the entire region.

Never in 100-plus years has the economy of our region, and the whole north, looked so bleak for the oil and gas industry, and for economic development, generally. All the tree huggers and green people are happy, but come and take a look. Come and see what you're doing to our people. The government has turned our region into a social assistance state. We are Inuvialuit who are proud people and who like to work and look after ourselves, not depend on welfare.

I thank God we worked very closely with the Harper government and had the all-weather highway built into Tuk. It opened in November 2017, if some of you haven't heard, and now we are learning to work with tourism. We all know that's not the money and work that we were used to in the oil and gas days that we liked.

I see the industry coming back. I support this to hopefully make things smoother for us a little further down the road when it does, as long as Bill C-69 doesn't throw a monkey wrench into things, as it looks like it will.

If you want to discuss Bill C-69, I could come back and give you a longer discussion, but as it is, thank you for your time.

[David V. Wright, Legal Counsel, Gwich'in Tribal Council]

Good morning, distinguished members of the committee.

My name is David Wright and I am presenting this morning on behalf of the Gwich'in Tribal Council.

Grand Chief Bobbie Jo Greenland-Morgan sends her regrets but sincerely thanks you for the invitation and welcomes this opportunity to provide input on Bill C-88. I should add that I also regret being unable to attend in person. If there are any technical difficulties during my submission, feel free to stop me while we sort those out.

By way of background, I was formerly in-house legal counsel with the Gwich'in Tribal Council and am currently assisting on this particular matter. I intend to be very brief with my remarks, recognizing the time constraints, but I welcome any questions you may have as we proceed.

I'll begin with a few short contextual, informational points about the Gwich'in before moving on to three succinct points about Bill C-88.

As many of you would know, the Gwich'in are North America's northernmost first nations people. Since time immemorial, the Gwich'in have occupied traditional territories across what is today Yukon, Northwest Territories and Alaska. In 1921, the chiefs and headmen of Gwich'in, Fort McPherson and Tsiigehtchic—what was formerly known as Arctic Red River—signed Treaty 11 with representatives of the Crown. In 1992, the Gwich'in signed the Gwich'in Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement with Canada and the Government of Northwest Territories.

The Gwich'in Tribal Council, which I'll refer to today as the GTC, was established in 1992 to represent the Gwich'in in regard to implementation of the land claim agreement and protection of Gwich'in rights and interests in the Mackenzie Delta region and beyond. Since signing the land claim agreement, the GTC and the four community-level land claim organizations—typically referred to as designated Gwich'in organizations or DGOs—have been working extremely hard to implement the land claim.

Similar to the Tlicho and the Sahtu, the Gwich'in have a treaty right to co-management. This includes requirements in chapter 24 of the land claim that establish the Gwich'in Land and Water Board.

With respect to Bill C-88 specifically, the GTC is present today to voice its support for swift passage of this bill. I'll make three specific points, all in relation to part 1 of the bill, which is the part dealing with the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act.

The first point is that passage of Bill C-88 in a timely manner has great importance in terms of Crown-indigenous relations and reconciliation. Your review of Bill C-88 is taking place within this broader context of implementation of land claim agreements.

Your review of Bill C-88 and its implementation context is part of what has not been a smooth or straightforward journey for any of the treaty parties. Canada has lost the trust of indigenous groups at many turns. There are, of course, numerous examples of this, unfortunately, but certainly a clear case in point is the problematic changes that Bill C-15 attempted to bring in. I am speaking, of course, about the creation of the super-board and the associated elimination of the land and water boards of the Gwich'in, Tlicho and Sahtu.

As you know, the current government committed to eliminating these problematic Bill C-15 changes. This is an extremely important commitment made by Canada to the indigenous communities of the Northwest Territories. It represents an important step towards restoring trust. Indeed, the consultation process on Bill C-88 has actually helped restore some of the trust between Canada and the GTC. That trust would be eroded by any further delay, or at worst, failure to pass this bill in a timely manner.

As an aside, a significant amount of consultation on this bill has already taken place, as I am sure representatives from Canada will tell you this morning. Away from that government-to-government negotiation, the GTC and the board of directors of the GTC have been working hard to review and deliberate on the changes proposed in this bill.

The second point is that while the GTC will leave it to the Tlicho this afternoon to discuss the litigation and the court injunction barring implementation of the super-board, the GTC reiterates that it was very pleased with the result obtained by the Tlicho in court. The GTC sees passage of Bill C-88 as a critical next step.

If Bill C-88 is not passed, not only will Canada not have fulfilled its commitment to Northwest Territories indigenous communities, but these communities will be forced back into time-consuming, expensive, acrimonious litigation, all adversely affecting that treaty relationship and the broader reconciliation project. Further, this would generate regulatory uncertainty that benefits no one, as the architecture for project reviews in the Mackenzie Valley would then remain fluid.

Bill C-88 is a step toward certainty in the Mackenzie Valley, and that is a step that should be taken at this time in the view of the GTC.

Third, and finally, for members of the committee interested in reforms that are not included in Bill C-88 in its present form, the GTC would respectfully submit that now is not the time to pursue such changes. Rather, now is the time to pass the important changes in Bill C-88, particularly part 1, so that the Northwest Territories modern treaty partners can move forward beyond the threat of the super-board and the toxicity of litigation.

However, members of the committee will, no doubt, be heartened to recall that an opportunity for further review of the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act is in the offing. As I believe you've heard from members of this committee, and other witnesses, further review of the MVRMA is coming as part of the five-year post-devolution review of the legislation, and a previously announced broader review of the legislation.

For example, if members are interested in including explicit reference to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, that could be part of this forthcoming review. Similarly, the review will likely take place at a time when there's finally certainty with respect to changes that may come through the proposed impact assessment act, for the regime in southern Canada. For example, changes with respect to timelines, factors to consider in an assessment and decision-making parameters could all be part of that later review.

As such, it will make sense to revisit the MVRMA at a later time, to ensure, perhaps, proper alignment between northern and southern project assessment regimes.

All this is to say that there is this release valve, or parking lot, if you will, that exists right now for ideas that go beyond the current version of Bill C-88. Discussion about potential inclusion of those ideas in the bill is, respectfully, inappropriate at this time and would be better directed towards this future process, which we expect will be a process in which indigenous communities will fully collaborate.

Those are the prepared submissions of the GTC today, but I'm more than happy to discuss any of this during the question and answer period. I would note that if any questions are particularly technical or political in nature, I may refrain from answering, but will respond at a later time, after we are able to discuss with the GTC leadership and technical staff.

Thank you.

[Witness spoke in Dene as follows:]

Mahsi cho.

[Dene text translated as follows:]

Thank you.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'm guessing here and I want your comments, but it seems to me that tacking on the offshore drilling moratorium added a lot more time to that consultation. I'm hoping, but maybe not. This was in court. There was an injunction. We knew we had to do something with it. We all wanted to move ahead with devolution. I know consultation takes time, but it just seems we're stuck with a very rushed process here that may or may not be successful.

I can't find anything in this bill that talks about providing funding assistance to intervenors, a piece that we see in Bill C-69, which I think is very important. I think a lot of first nations and other intervenors would find it essential to something like this. Why isn't that included in this legislation?

Government Priorities

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised transparency and accountability. He said, “sunlight is the world's best disinfectant.” However, the Prime Minister shut down two committee investigations into his attempted interference in a criminal prosecution, and he is blocking the release of information in defence of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman.

The Prime Minister kicked out two ministers for telling Canadians the truth. The Prime Minister tried to hide a $10.5-million payment to a convicted terrorist and then said that veterans are “asking for more than we are able to give”.

The Prime Minister promised a collaborative relationship with provinces and territories, but eight provinces oppose his no-more-pipelines bill, Bill C-69, and five provinces are fighting his carbon tax.

A year ago, the Liberals said spending billions of dollars would get the Trans Mountain expansion built immediately, but not a single inch has been built. He also defended funding anti-energy activists who want to stop it through Canada summer jobs program while giving Canadian tax dollars to China to build pipelines in Asia.

Clearly, this Prime Minister is not as advertised.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

That's right, October 21.

Now, when my friend Mr. Hehr talked about how it was the Conservatives talking about Bill C-69, calling it the “no more pipelines bill”, it actually wasn't us. We picked it up from industry. They coined that term and we took it from them.

Maybe you can tell us a bit about competitiveness overall in Canada and how we are faring.

[Kent Hehr, Liberal, Calgary Centre, AB]

I have a quick question to follow up on Ms. Stubbs' line of questioning. It appears to me right now that what we were operating on before was the 2012 process for developing pipelines that put in place by the Conservatives and, at least from my view, if there has been a “no pipeline bill”, that would essentially be it, as it led to pipelines being in court, not in the ground.

In any event, I know that Bill C-69 has tried to deal with some of that and some of your work around that. Can you talk about early engagement? It seems like that was not as significantly involved in the earlier 2012 process. Is that incorporated in Bill C-69?

[Chris Evans]

In terms of Bill C-69, the overall objectives of the act were to put in place a framework that would give greater transparency to everybody involved in the regulatory process and to restore public trust. This would be in recognition of the fact that efficient, credible and predictable assessments in decision-making processes are critical to attracting investment and maintaining competitiveness.

The overall process would create an impact assessment system with better timelines and greater clarity from the start for all stakeholders, both proponents and Canadians at large, and be built with a lot of engagement with first nations.

Right now, as you know, Bill C-69 is before the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, with all of the parliamentary activity that involves. I don't think we're in a great position to comment more on it.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I heard one of Canada's best resource economists say we're here to make astrologers look good.

I just wanted to get some clarity on that.

Getting back to the study, one of the things we heard—and I remember Professor Monica Gattinger talking about her concerns with respect to the lack of trust in the regulatory system—was that trust would continue to erode until the regulatory system was fixed, or the holes in it were fixed.

Could you comment on what's been done there, what Bill C-69 was meant to address in that regard and where that stands?

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

If you could find out about it and then table it with the committee, that would be great. I remember its being announced, but didn't really ever see the conclusion. Given the dollar amount we knew it would cost taxpayers, it would be great if Canadians would be able to get to see that report.

Speaking about the regulatory review for crucial energy infrastructure in Canada, Bill C-69, as you referenced, will make some major changes. The provinces and three territories have now come out with deep concerns about the impacts of Bill C-69 on future development of oil and gas, given the draft project list that was released last week, all of the kinds of interventions in provincial jurisdiction, as well as the the impact on the ability to build anything in Canada. It's not your job to answer for that; it's the politicians' job.

Because there was a budget allotment relating to the transition between the NEB to whatever ends up coming out of Bill C-69, is your department involved in the plans for that transition? Are you able to shed any light on what the timeline would look like? Can I get some details on that?

[Frank Des Rosiers, Assistant Deputy Minister, Innovation and Energy Technology Sector, Department of Natural Resources]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here and to report on our progress.

I'm accompanied by two colleagues: Dr. Cecile Siewe, director general of the CanmetENERGY laboratory in Devon, Alberta; and Chris Evans, senior director in the petroleum resources branch at Natural Resources Canada.

We shared a copy of a short overview presentation, but I thought perhaps I could touch on it quickly to give you a bit of sense of what has happened since our last encounter on this topic.

With regard to the broad context and sheer importance of the oil and gas sector in the country, it is a major industry, a major driver of jobs, GDP, and exports. You have seen some of those data in the report itself, but it's worth reminding ourselves that it's 276,000 jobs around the country, so it affects a lot of people and their families. It accounts for some $100 billion in exports and 5.6% of GDP. Canada is a very large player in the global scene in the production and export of both oil and natural gas.

As we all know, the industry has faced some pretty challenging times in recent years, in particular thanks to the decline in commodity prices affecting world markets. Our industry and our people working in this industry surely felt it most directly.

Despite the short-term turmoil, the long-term future of the oil and gas industry remains quite strong, as shown in NEB reports, as well as assessments conducted by the International Energy Agency. Despite those challenging times, we've had our share of good news lately with some major project announcements, including the largest project in Canada's history, the LNG Canada project, a $40 billion project in British Columbia. This project will make Canada a prominent player in the LNG space, which as we know is a very important trend globally in energy markets, with our being the cleanest energy producer in the world. This will assist us in servicing our Asian clients, who are trying to move away from coal.

Another key project worth noting is in the offshore of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Hebron project, a $14 billion initiative. There are also major petrochemical projects in Alberta, which were announced in recent months. These are certainly encouraging signs.

We're coming back to the elements of the government's response to the report you produced. They are grouped around four main themes.

The first one was around intergovernmental collaboration and co-operation, the second focused on building public trust and transparency, the third was directed at engagement with indigenous people and resource development, and the fourth was on innovation in oil and gas.

I hope to cover some of this in my interim remarks, but because of time considerations, we may have to cover this during the Qs and As.

I'd like to note some of the major initiatives currently in play. There is Bill C-69, which is currently in front of the Senate for deliberation. There is the work around the consultation for the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which is also ongoing. I should also note the sizable investment made by the government in clean technology innovation—some $3 billion has been invested to date, with some key investments in the oil and gas sector, which I will touch on.

Looking at the engagement with citizens was also a key element of our focus this past fall. Our department's Generation Energy Council is engaged with some 380,000 Canadians on what the future of energy should look like. In those discussions, four pathways have emerged. One of these was being a clean oil and gas producer, which remains central to our game plan.

To cut to the chase, the key takeaway from that consultation, which lasted several months, was the desire of our citizens to see us as competitive, to make sure that our oil and gas industry can thrive, and to sustain those jobs and wealth creation. However, it also looked at ways to improve our environmental performance in terms of both GHGs and also our impacts on water and land.

Those two themes were very present throughout our conversation, along with the theme of the innovation required to get to that desired objective.

The industry has gone through a rather challenging environment lately, and this past December the government announced a support package to help the workers and communities affected by the downturn in the price of oil and gas. The total package was worth $1.6 billion.

I want to perhaps touch on some of those key components, the first one being $1 billion in commercial financial support coming from Export Development Canada to support the working capital needs of companies as well as their export potential in new markets.

The second envelope was $500 million from the Business Development Bank to help commercial financing to diversify those markets.

The third component was around R and D, with a $50 million investment from the clean growth program at NRCan being set aside. The total value of those projects is $890 million.

The next component was from the strategic innovation fund from ISED, the innovation department. That's a $100 million envelope.

Lastly, there is access to the national trade corridors fund, with a total value of $750 million. A significant amount of commitments have been made in that regard.

To close, in terms of tax measures, in the fiscal updates in the past fall, as colleagues will know, Mr. Chair, there was a significant announcement with regard to accelerated capital cost allowance measures to boost the competitiveness of all industry sectors in the country. The total value of those measures was in the order of $5 billion in terms of foregone tax revenues. Obviously, the oil and gas sector, being such a major player in terms of domestic industry, was one of those that obviously benefited from it, especially in terms of expensing clean energy equipment investments.

That brings me to the innovation team, which I touched on earlier. Obviously I will not be comprehensive here, but again, through our conversations that will follow, we may be able to touch a bit more on that. The government has been working very closely with industry and provincial governments to look at ways to really help drive the industry forward in terms of the future, as the title of your study invites.

While the industry does a terrific job in looking at those incremental improvements, there's a collective sense that we need to look at leapfrogging in terms of environmental performance and cost reductions. This is where renewed efforts with extraction technologies, tailing ponds management, air emissions as well as carbon use have been widely seen as being critical.

I won't go into those in detail, but to give you a bit of a hint, in terms of extraction technologies, there are some promising leads there that we and the industry are pursuing with vigour, to look at both reducing the cost of production but also reducing emissions by the order of 40% to 50%. We have a number of projects in this area, which are very exciting indeed, that we are driving quite actively right now.

It's the same thing in the area of tailings. We hear a lot of concern among our citizens in terms of how we can cope with those and reduce the production of those tailing ponds. There's effort there. It's also looking at using some of those tailing ponds and making sure that we're able to extract the valuable hydrocarbon and heavy metals such as titanium to be able to make better use of it. It's very much in the spirit of a cyclical economy, being able to recycle some of those products.

We have a large-scale project currently under way, which was announced by the Province of Alberta with Titanium Corporation, to do precisely that.

These are, for us, very encouraging signs of what Canada is able to do. Of all sectors, the oil and gas sector in Canada has been known for decades to be extremely innovative and entrepreneurial. I have a lot of confidence that we'll be able to advance those projects successfully.

The the penultimate slide speaks a bit to how we went about doing it. As you know, the pan-Canadian framework was anchored around this notion of working collaboratively with provincial and territorial governments. We felt it was the right thing to do to pay special attention to how we went about doing business.

There I could point out perhaps three elements that were, in our eyes, quite meaningful. The first is the establishment of a clean growth hub, which is essentially a one-stop shop for people to interact with the federal family. Sometimes it's a bit difficult if you're a university researcher, a small firm out there, to figure out whom to talk to. Their wish was to have have a one-stop shop where they could interact with us. We heard that feedback, and we took it to heart and established this hub. It is is a grouping of 16 department and agencies physically co-located in an office here in downtown Ottawa. They are able to interact with clients and direct them, whether they need financing, access to market, regulatory changes or issues around procurement—whatever topic they may have.

In our one short year of operation, we've had more than 1,000 clients come our way to look for guidance and support, and it's a very popular feature of our ecosystem nowadays.

The second thing I would note is around the trusted partnership model. We have finite resources both federally and provincially to invest taxpayers' dollars, so we have to try to find ways to use those limited resources smartly. We reach out to provinces and say “How about we try to identify together what the most promising technologies are and look at having an integrated review process?”.

Instead of having researchers in universities go through separate processes both federally and provincially, we essentially recognize each other's process, saving an enormous amount of time for the researchers and innovators to access the federal or provincial funding, and also it speeds up the process considerably. We have eight or nine of those trusted partnership models across the country, which have proven to be quite successful.

The third and last thing I would note is that the government announced, in budget 2019, $100 million in funding for the Clean Resource Innovation Network, or CRIN for short. It brings together innovators in the oil and gas sector, mostly in western Canada, and the grouping has been active now for about a year. The federal government was happy to provide some support for that. They were actually in town just this past week, and it looks to be quite exciting in development.

To conclude, I'll talk about the national energy labs.

We have a network of four national labs located in several parts of the country, in Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton, Ontario, and Alberta. They bring together more than 600 researchers, engineers and technicians in this field.

They cover a wide range of technologies: renewable energy, PV, geothermal, bioenergy, marine, energy efficiency, advanced materials. They look at artificial intelligence application in energy as well as fossil energy.

We have the privilege of having Dr. Cecile Siewe here, who is the lab DG from our CanmetENERGY-Devon facility, which is focusing precisely on oil and gas research. As we'll hear during the audience, there's a lot of work there around water research, extraction technologies, partial upgrading, oil spill recovery and a lot of those domains of expertise. Dr. Siewe is a highly renowned scientist in her own right but also the lead of that lab. I thought it could be of interest to the committee members to interact directly with her.

I'll pause here and turn the floor over to you.

Natural Resources

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised a collaborative relationship with provinces and territories, but eight provinces and three territories opposed his “no more pipelines” Bill C-69, five provinces are fighting his carbon tax, and the majority of Canadians and indigenous communities all along the route support the Trans Mountain expansion and want it built. Liberals have spent billions, delayed the decision and not built an inch.

Instead of fighting the provinces and pitting Canadians against each other, will the Prime Minister do what he said he would do and release a plan to approve and build the Trans Mountain expansion?